Before developers unsheath their sledgehammers to raze 4000 Wisconsin Ave. NW — a large, reasonably attractive, rather youthful structure — how about shaking a leg and rebuilding the American University Park site a mile or so away that once housed (the never-revamped) Superfresh?

The former Superfresh supermarket at 48th and Yuma streets NW sits vacant as the site awaits redevelopment. (Brian Kapur/The Current/July 2017)

Fallow now for several years, the one-time supermarket carcass at 48th and Yuma streets NW is remarkably nondescript and no longer providing an alternative — if only logistical — to Tenley’s Whole Foods and Safeway, the latter being also defunct. (Mercifully, tasteful minds prevailed — after many years — with the new Giant at Cathedral Commons. And Rodman’s remains as our sui generis quirky gem.)

Some have argued that building a little bit higher would generate undesirable traffic, but right now just a few vehicles trickle by in that neighborhood per hour. Let it not be forgotten that Washington is a city, not a hamlet somewhere in Montana; what’s more, the alternatives proposed are hardly skyscrapers.